


Daddy issues

by AlannaGuerrero



Category: Cobra Kai (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Meta, Metafiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-14 20:27:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29547918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlannaGuerrero/pseuds/AlannaGuerrero
Summary: Johnny has excuses for every failure, but Robby still had to go through the pain on his own
Relationships: Robby Keene & Johnny Lawrence
Kudos: 18





	Daddy issues

After seeing him with the kids from his dojo, after seeing him with Miguel, there was a question Robby couldn't help but ask: Why is Johnny such a good father figure when he’s such a terrible father?

***

Truth is, Johnny failed him from the very beginning.

Robby doesn’t remember any of it, of course, but he’s heard it enough times from his mother that it felt like an actual memory.

Shannon went through labor on her own, delivered on her own, went home on her own.

All because Johnny was out drinking with some randos, people who didn’t give a fuck that Robby was being born, that his first child -his only child- was entering the world where his absence this time would just be the first of many disappointments.

And if that wasn’t an example of starting as you mean to go on, Robby didn’t know what was.

_ (Johnny  _ **_had_ ** _ been out drinking, that day and the days that surrounded it. _

_ He’d been lost in the haze of alcohol, in the pain of losing his mother, the only person who had ever cared for him, who was suddenly gone, forever. She’d been there and then she wasn’t. Gone so suddenly and unexpectedly as only a parent can leave, breaking their child's belief in eternity, in the promise that they would always be there.) _

It wasn’t the only time he wasn’t there for Robby. It happened over and over again as he grew up: missed birthdays and late or unwanted gifts, missing father day’s cards and all those silly activities schools tended to organize without regard to the students' home situations.

Shannon had played a part in building Robby’s resentment, with her assurances that Johnny didn’t care, that he was only good enough for child support, that he was a good for nothing loser and would always be.

But Johnny had done the rest.

( _ And he was never there to give his version of the story) _

He was forty and Robby five and he hadn’t gone to his birthday party. He was forty five and Robby ten and he’d missed his first skateboard tricks, and the biggest scrapes.

He’d missed laughter and tears and that’s why he missed when sweet sensitive Robby started lying his way through school absences.

That’s why he missed the thefts and the friends and that’s why, when he was finally made aware of what was going on and he promised Robby to be there for him Robby didn’t believe him. Couldn’t trust him.

  
  


It wasn’t like that with Miguel.

Miguel didn't have a lifetime of failed parenting attached to his feelings for Johnny.

Everything was easier with Miguel.

Miguel had memories of being saved from bullies and laughter and lessons of empowerment and evidence of Johnny's improvement in small spurts, right in front of his eyes.

Perhaps that’s another invisible scar left by Johnny. Just another doubt Robby has to live with: that he wasn’t enough for Johnny to change, to get his life together, to grow, but Miguel was.

Miguel, with his strength and his mother and his haughty smiles.

How much better than Robby must he be? How much more worth it?

But even then, even with that pain, Robby still wanted his father. He still wanted Johnny to be there for him, to notice him. To see him.

He’d tried.

But everytime he did something else seemed to be more important than him.

When he went to see him at his dojo and he was  _ hugging  _ **him.** When his arm was hurt he wasn’t there.

When he was scared out of his mind, scared of what he’d done to Miguel, afraid of what would happen to him, to both of them.

At that lowest moment, when he’d been so scared and felt so alone he had wished for his father, he had wished with all his heart that Johnny would be there for him.

And he wasn’t.

Like all those times before, he wasn’t.

Did that mean that Johnny was ignoring him? Was he so worried about Miguel that the coudn’t bear to talk to Robby?

Or did he simply not care?

Robby had never felt so alone.

  
  


( _ Johnny was lost in a haze once more, of self-hatred this time. _

_ He saw what happened, how broken Miguel’s body looked, what Robby had done, and he blamed himself. _

_ For teaching him karate, for not being there for Robby, for teaching Miguel to have mercy, for everything _ )

***

Nothing changed when he came back.

Johnny cared about Robby, but when he had time, when he wasn’t doing anything else, when he wasn’t busy with more important things and people.

He’d hoped against hope, he’d put his heart out there on last time.

But Johnny didn’t come.

( _ Johnny knew what he was doing this time. He knew Robby was waiting for him. But he still chose not to go to him. Once again. _ )

Robby couldn’t go with either of them, he couldn’t trust Daniel or Johnny. Both of them had betrayed him, disappointed him, forgotten him.

So he looked for another way. Kreese offered that to him, without asking, without expecting Robby to change who he is and how he does things.

_ (Johnny wasn’t drunk this time either. He just didn’t know what to do, so he did nothing, once again. _ )

Robby wasn’t expecting him but he is unsurprised that once again Johnny has chosen to be there for others in ways he wasn’t for him. Still, he asks him to become part of Cobra Kai once more, to listen to Kresse.

He doesn't listen and fights Kreese instead, really fights him.

He says he won’t fight Robby, and the next thing Robby knows is he’s waking up with his head throbbing and Daniel and Johnny ganging up on Kreese, surrounded by their little minions.

Johnny is -of all possible emotions to be had- surprised to see him.

“Robby”, he says, as if suddenly remembering that his son exists, that he doesn't just disappear when Johnny is no longer looking at him.

Robby makes a decision, then. The first one, the last one.

He is over Johnny, over Daniel, over Sam.

“Get out of here,” he tells them. “All of you.”


End file.
